


The Body That Carries You

by levendis



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Gender/Sexuality, F/M, Nonverbal Communication, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 20:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6300064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sideways, head tilt, semi-mouth purse. I’ve been writing them down. Haven’t translated that one." Or, the importance of being yourself in front of someone who accepts you for what you are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Body That Carries You

  
"Thank you," the Doctor says. Perfunctory. A password. That's wrong, isn't it, he's meant to be - what. Something.  
  
"For what, not letting you be killed by sand-piranhas? Or coming up with an incredibly clever plan?" Clara, grabbing her purse out of the locked drawer in her desk.  
  
'For everything' would be the correct answer, is the answer he'd like to make, but that's too much, isn't it. His mouth refuses to form the words. "Both," he says, smiling tightly, briefly.  
  
"That's what we do, yeah? We take care of each other." She's wearing different clothing - why? And when had that happened? She's wearing different clothing and she's clutching her small bag filled with whatever mysteries she fills her small bags with, and there's an expression on her face he can't interpret.  
  
And then he's left alone in the classroom. The lingering weight of adolescent psychic trauma, the clock running three minutes fast. The whiteboard wiped clean, faint outlines of words, page numbers. He squeezes himself behind one of the desks, hunched and uncomfortably folded. Everything pressing in.

 

* * *

  
  
Pulled down, drawn in. Belatedly. Not that it's ever truly too late, or that this can't be undone. But this has been coming, these are the decisions and the mistakes that he's made. This is them, ending. And he can feel it, can feel Clara's resignation, her bittersweet sadness, spilling out from the clenched fist that she always is.  
  
And she's smiling, somehow.  
  
Gravity, humanity, his feet on the ground, held tight in the here and the now. For her, for once. Flush against the edges. An opportunity here, he knows. An offer she is making, one last time. They could be - he could fix this. But he's a coward, and she's speaking in a language he doesn't understand, the words below the words. And the moment passes.  
  
(He carries her to the beach, because it's loud in the TARDIS and quiet out here. And to look at her, maybe, her sleep-smoothed features. Something bright and prickly straining against this moment, in his throat.)  
  
(And she stays, although he can't figure why. Not much to do with him, he imagines. But be grateful for this. For her. This small human, all that she is and has been and will be twining around him, drawn taut. He could say something, do something, but he's a coward. They pull the lever together. All of time and space spread out before them.)

 

* * *

  
  
"What does all that mean?"  
  
"Hmm?" He pulls himself away from the conversation he'd been having with his ship. An unfortunate but currently unfixable bleed-out in what he might qualify as 'lower decks', if fixed spatial locations and physical attributes were in any way accurate things to ascribe to the TARDIS. But he is sorry, and he says so, his hand drifting reluctantly away from the controls.  
  
Clara points up to the central column, the metaphor of light and travel, wheels spinning. The symbols. "It's Gallifreyan, I know that much. But. Is it a 'keep hands away from the machinery' sort of thing, or what?"  
  
They mean, oh, they mean a thousand things. The gateway that language is, small worlds behind careful grammar.  
  
She's looking at him expectantly. And something else. Eyes wide, shoulders tucked, lips quirked at a particular angle. She's waiting.  
  
"It's a sort of a prayer," he says finally. "Or a good-luck charm. They're-" The names of people he'd known, the places he'd been. A request to the universe, to whatever gods were still listening, to keep him safe. A ward against the darkness. He traces the lines with his gaze, the meaning unfolding and then something unfolding inside him. The body he carries around now pulling back, a tightness in his chest and tears in his eyes. An approximation of the tangled, sinking thing that he is.  
  
She's taking his hand - he's remembering that he has a hand - he is focusing on this, the narrow point of connection between them. None of this makes sense, could possibly make sense to either of them. Except the fact of her arms around him, the tight fist of her now spread across the both of them, pulling him closer. Here, and now. Pressure, the smell of her (perfume and coffee and the shuddering, flickering artron energy, and something that's just - Clara). The ship spinning them out, the weight of the vortex.  


 

* * *

  
  
A swarming.  
  
Clara in poorly-functioning clothing. Shivering, feet hesitant on the console room floor. Shorter than she usually is, softer around the edges. A kindness, and an ache, and a buzzing mix of uncertainty and sorrow and need and - something. She's loud, so impossibly loud, does she know? How much space she takes up?  
  
The TARDIS curling protectively around him. Around the both of them. The temperature rising. She takes his hand, her skin and blood and bones, muscles flexing gently around the edges of what he is. He's never been all that comfortable in this body, gears grinding and not quite catching. A half-step away. And what's the thing that he does now, that she wants now, her palm pressed up against his chest. Breath caught, bit lip, a flush. He can hear her, static on the line. He's moving, he's moving. His back against the edge of what the TARDIS is. The three of them, end to end.  
  
She kisses the man the Doctor wishes he could be, for her sake, kisses the face he wears around now. A second chance, third chance, surely he's run out of chances by now. But still: she stays.

 

* * *

  
  
(They'd crash-landed on Earth and their kin, their ward - insomuch as a child could be the guardian of another, slightly more childish child - had gotten bored, and had hidden herself easily, the projection looped comfortably around the thing that she was. Human-shaped, human-voiced, the lazy pleasure of solving puzzles far beneath herself. Or something else. She'd picked a name out of a book, and then become it. Took classes at the local school. Made friends, made enemies, a charade or...not. The person she'd decided to present herself as.  
  
They'd shuffled themself into shape, because she'd said _grandfather_ and they knew what that meant. A body, a face, a certain pace. The local clothing, or just about - they might have fudged, slightly, upon discovering the wide, incomprehensible variety of attire this culture had available. They'd settled down into an old man's body, for Susan's sake. Susan, as she preferred to be called. Casting aside her family name so quickly. They could call attention to the implied disrespect, the distance between what she'd been taught to be and what she'd become. But they'd stolen a TARDIS, hadn't they, had been marked for death or at the very least banishment before vanishing into the wilds. They couldn't - what was the phrase? Throw stones, living in this glass house.  
  
So they'd assumed the appearance most appropriate at the time. As had the TARDIS, whining into shape. And then catching, the both of them. Broken-down and settling into their last, best attempt at blending in. And they'd fallen in love, at some point, with this odd angry planet, the damp violent corner that called itself England. The tight-knit, small-scale loyalty of the people. The taste of the air. The effort, the failures, the ground. Dirt and stone and moss and blood. Linearity, things becoming other things in a definite, one-after-another way. Something compelling. An anchor cast off the bow.  
  
And it's easiest to be a man, or to look like a man, in their clear-cut definition. Human-shaped, a certain haircut, a countenance. Drifting into the thing that this culture was. They hold onto their name, their title. The word that encompasses them, just about. Slight variations on the one central idea. The Doctor, in the shape they'd assumed was best. He'd assumed, now. Best to avoid confusion.)

 

* * *

  
  
He draws her. His memory blurring out, hands unsteady. Graphite smears on his fingers. What she is, what she means. Words below the words, her peculiar language of muscle and motion. He fails - how could he not? - but he tries. The angle of her mouth, the particulars of posture. The effortless modulation, the native control of her physicality. How she is when she's happy but sad, disappointed but accepting. The obscure subtleties of humanity.  
  
His fingers clenched around the pencil, wrist straight. The book of her, accumulated, facial expressions and notes and footnotes and footnotes on the footnotes. Diagrams, scattered references to touchstones that he's long since forgotten the precise import of. Poetry, coordinates, xenobiology. Scrabbling around the edges of her. The complicated knot that she is. He owes her this much, at least. To know, just about, what it means when she ducks her head and then stares at him with wide, hungry eyes. The look you might get, situated on the edge of a cliff you're tempted to jump off. The flash cards heavy in his pocket, all the things he doesn't quite know how to say.

 

* * *

  
  
The skin of the body he wears now itching. Tight against what he is, the spiraling whirl of everything, all of it, squeezed uncomfortably into place. She's worried, he knows that face. Concerned.  
  
He's fine, for the record. Perfectly fine. If straining a bit. The effort of being here and now. He's thought about showing her, more than once, the recursive loop of doubt and vulnerability. The breadth of him, the weight of his affection for her. The ways they come together so far beyond the places she thinks to look.  
  
"You asked me once," she says, a new face now. He tucks that information away. Shoulders back, hands in her pockets, lips pursed. "To see you. Really see you."  
  
"And you did. Thanks, by the way." He hopes he's remembered the correct sequence of facial expressions, hopes the way he's involuntarily pulling back, staring at his boots, running his hand through his hair, hopes all of that means what he's feeling. This would be easier, of course, if he knew what it was he was feeling, if he weren't scattershot and buzzing out, blindly fumbling for a hand-hold.  
  
"But I don't. Not really. I mean - you're holding back, aren't you? There's something you're not showing me."  
  
He's not showing her a lot of things. He couldn't, he shouldn't, he can't. But he can feel the warm, kind rush of her, reassurance, an outstretched hand. A fear, but resolved. Determined.  
  
She gets what she wants, where he's concerned. She always does. How could he resist her? They've made their decisions, and this is what happens.  
  
He puts his hand to her face, where the bone presses against skin. Fingers skating towards pulse points, by her ear, under her jaw. And he breathes in. Something small and scared and hopeful inside him, clawing against him. He breathes out, and he asks a question.  
  
_Are you sure?_  
  
"No," she says. "Are you?"  
  
_Not usually, no._ He smiles, she smiles back. And he pushes in, the membrane of what he is splitting against her. Everything that lies behind it, bruised and confused and tangled and yearning. And afraid, oh, so terribly afraid: the things that could happen, how easily he could lose her, how anchorless he'd be. Her hand tightens around his.  
  
They blur together. _I'm here and I'm here and it's okay, it's okay._ Spread before her, still a coward but now, now. A decision made. Muscles flexing, and something flexing behind that. He waits.  
  
"You're beautiful," she says, aloud and in his head. He echoes the sentiment.  
  
Thousands and thousands of years, and not nearly enough time. Something inside him, beside him, unfurling; the quick, sharp, delicate branching that Clara is spreading out around him. Here and now, and then, and everywhere. She's crying, but smiling, somehow.

 

* * *

  
  
"You look human," Clara says. She's taken his clothes off, the layers of cotton and wool. Centers herself over the part of him he'd apparently designed, half-aware, for just such an occasion.  
  
"I try," he says. He watches her face, the flutter-shift of expressions, the flush gradations, and he only knows what half of it means. If that.  
  
She touches him, the body he'd made. Tugging gently at the hair on his chest, thumbs tracing his ribs, then hipbones, then catching in his belly button, hand spanning the not-much width of him. And then lower. Bit lip, pink cheeks, the smell of her. Breathing going ragged, a tension. The thing that she was white-hot and vulnerable against him, gasping, shaking. Whatever it was he was supposed to do with his body, hip thrusts and his hands on her. He hopes he's remembered correctly. The sequence of events. She gets what she'd wanted, he thinks; squirming over him, blood rushing, a release. A relaxation, her body going limp and contented next to his.  
  
"What are you thinking about?" She's tilted, scrunched. Her eyes on him, kind but something else. He tries to memorize the something else, to put a name to later.  
  
He hadn't been thinking about anything. Or: everything, which amounts to much the same thing. He'd been elsewhere, ish. He puts his hand to her face, where the bone presses against skin.  
  
"Where to go next," he says. "There's a good boot sale on in 3017. Mostly salvage and socks but some excellent food stalls."  
  
"Space-kebabs?" She snuggles in close to him, ducking her face from his hand and aligning it with his neck. Warm/wet breath, DNA, the sprawl-out of the thing that she is held gently against him. He tries not to listen.  
  
"It's all space," he says. "Everything is space. Earth is space, the outer limits, for most of the known universe. There's no center away from which everything else is 'in space'."  
  
"Wash the space-kebabs down with a bit of ice-cold space-Fanta," she murmurs, half-asleep.  
  
"That's not - yes, fine, okay." He puts his arms around her, his not-arms around her. Resting, for once, against the steady, sleep-still wall of her. A quiet, a weight. He relaxes as she starts snoring. Blurring, the two of them, the thing that they are. Everything they could be, could do, spiraling out from this point. Not that there is a center, but if there were -  
  
He breathes in. Listens to her heart beat, the faint edge of her dream. The center is relative, of course. Everyone is their own fixed point. And this, now. A tether, a leash held loose but firmly. Everything that he is settling down around her. The future looming, but if he can stay here, just here, this one moment, his fear held at bay. The rhythm of her. One second at a time, second after minute after hour. This small linear human next to him. Keep time, and keep her safe, and keep at least just this, now. The shape of this, the two of them. He exhales, and thinks about where to go next.


End file.
